which had comfortably rested on his mind, that he exclaimed, when his eyesight was beginning to fail, "Light, light! it is all light! Oh, that city!"

In the latter part of this day, he saw, for the last time, such of the family of his beloved partner as were then in the house; some of them being always at hand to aid in every kind and affectionate attention to their suffering relative. He sent several messages to those who were absent; and also to other friends, exhorting them to cleave close to God;' to be faithful in the care of their soul, and to act for the glory of God.

This evening his speech became much affected, and the closing scene seemed approaching. At twelve o'clock he fell into a profound sleep. The bitterness of death had passed, and he awoke at half-past four in the morning, only for a few seconds, when he desired to be raised; but in the attempt to comply with this request his spirit was released without a sigh. The conflict was over;

his warfare was accomplished; and

an entrance (can we doubt it?) was ministered to him abundantly, into the glorious kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

Thus on Sunday, January 22d, 1837, departed in faith from this world of care and sin, at the early age of thirty-six, our beloved and revered friend, Charles John Paterson. Very justly of him it might have been said, This world was not a world to him,' except only as a stage of trial-a path of pain and labour, to, a sure and everlasting home. To himself it was not an early removal. He long bore to Christ a faithful testimony in an erring generation, and had early obtained a meetness for the inheritance of the saints in light.

May we be indeed "followers of them who through faith and patience" have at length inherited these promises, which are beyond all power of change! And God grant, that in following their faith, we may profitably and gratefully "remember the end of their conversation, Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever!

Oh, YES! there is a recompence
To comfort those who mourn :
To hush the sigh-and dry the tear,
Of care and sorrow born:
A recompense by heaven designed
To cheer the weary lot

Of those, whom sadness prompts to fear,
Their grief by heaven forgot!
Yet deem not lightly of its worth-
If they who tempest driven,
Direct their earnest gaze for rest-
To every port but heaven!

If they whose hearts the world hath pierc'd,
Of every comfort shorn;

Ne'er gain the long-sought recompense-
The stay of those who mourn!
Not earth, nor all her boasted stores,
Contains the wish'd-for prize;
And vainly man confines his search-
To scenes beneath the skies;
By hope deferr'd-and keen remorse,
That heart shall still be torn-
That seeks on earth the promised rest,
Appointed those who mourn.

The wretch, who, with the weight of years

And sorrows, is opprest

May long for death to dry her tears,

And give the wish'd-for rest; But tho' he then no more endures

His proud oppressor's scorn—
Death cannot heal the wounds of those
Who, broken-hearted, mourn!

The rest that's prized by all mankind
But which so few obtain-

If sought elsewhere than heaven designed,
Must still be sought in vain!
And he whom blasted hopes have made
Sad, weary, and forlorn-
Finds in this unavailing search,

Another cause to mourn.

O, ye! whose weary souls have seen
The round of sin and pain-

And heart-sick prov'd each promis'd good
An' ignis fatuus' flame!

Seek ye that rest which earthly ills

With brighter joys adorn ;
And find the promis'd recompense

For those that inly mourn!

N. N.

MR. EDITOR,-I feel the accompanying narrative of the aged Christian, who was the means of ministering so greatly to my comfort and usefulness in a season of deep affliction, cannot fail to interest, and I would hope be of real service to many. There was a simplicity and fervour about Dr. M-, that made his company inexpressibly cheering and delightful, and I would fain hope, that many of your readers may feel as much pleasure in perusing, as I have in transcribing these records of a departed friend.

Your's truly,

PERSIS.

I

You have asked me to write the history of my early days; there is nothing of the strange or the uncommon in them. I have had many trials and bereavements. have known the joys of a happy family circle, and the sorrows of a solitary existence in a strange land. I am now old and grey-headed, and very shortly the hand that now traces these feeble characters, and the tongue which speaks to you of things which I have forgotten to write, will be stiff and speechless; but I am persuaded that he who has borne so long with me in my wanderings, and the love that has loved me with such an everlasting tenderness, will guide and direct me until I reach that

happy country, where there is neither sin, nor sorrow, nor separation, where the inhabitant shall not say, I am sick and since you desire to know more of me than you have yet heard, I can only pray that this record of my life may serve to stimulate you in running the race upon which you have entered, may help you to rejoice in the Lord your God, may encourage you in your exertions for the souls of others, and prove to you

that God is a very present help, and will be an eternal refuge for his people.

I was born in the year 176-, at Edinburgh. My father and mother died whilst I was walking the hospitals, leaving an only sister aged 13, to my care and guardianship. They were pious people, but I am sorry to say, their chil dren were not inclined to follow their good example.

My

sister had been sent to school when very young, and thus the one who was most disposed to profit by their godly admonitions was removed from their immediate control. My dear mother rarely enjoyed a day's ease, but I can well remember how she used to pray with me for she was not satisfied with the assertion that I had said my prayers.

I commenced practising as a physician at the usual age, and few can imagine the delight and enthusiasm with which I entered upon my profession. Being in the possession of a comfortable independence, I enjoyed the luxury of not being obliged to work hard for a living, and I was enabled to pay more attention to the poorer classes than my less favoured brethren could have done. I was never in want of patients. I only wish I had been then as much alive to the opportunities which were thus afforded me of doing good to the souls of the many to whom I had access, as I became soon after those opportunities passed away. But at that time I cared for none of these things. Out of easiness of temper and kindness of disposition, I did much that the world would applaud; but the charity and compassion which obtained for me so good a name amongst my fellow-creatures, was rather from imitation and admiration of the maxim that Fortune can give

nothing better than the powernature nothing better than the will of saving many,' than from the pure principle of love for the souls of those for whom Christ died, and the desire to copy the mind that was in him. I attended my parish church, for I thought it incumbent upon me to be in my place once on the Sunday. I had great respect for the truly religious, although I thought many of them went too far-were very busy-and somewhat enthusiastic. But I was far too much attached to my own profession to quarrel with the clergy for making much of their's, and besides this, I had had too much experience of the efficacy of a faithful pastor at the sick-bed in the day of distress, and at the hour of death, to call in question the fact of their being actuated by some living principle which gave to them a power I could by no means attain. I was ready enough to look upon religion as an anodyne, or cordial, to be used occasionally, but with caution' among friends and acquaintance; to be had in readiness against severe illnesses, sudden alarms, death-beds, and before funerals; but though I believed in its efficacy and thought it a most valuable nostrum, I felt my own inability to administer it. It was an unproved armour; and rather than allow my patients to suffer from the want of that which I could not supply, I was in the habit of sending clergymen of whose general talents and acquirements in the world's wisdom I had but a mean opinion, but whose fidelity and earnestness produced effects which I could neither gainsay nor refute.

And as one who is in the sear autumn of his existence, and who must ere long be numbered with the departed, let me remind, let me charge my brethren of the medical profession, who are SO rich in means of doing good, and promoting the welfare of so many,

that they remember the strict account that they must one day give of how they have improved or neglected these opportunities.Much is given to them, and much will be required. The physician is admitted where even the minister is excluded; how important a profession is theirs, and what a wide field of usefulness lies before them? How sad is it where the members give occasion for the complaint, Where there are three doctors, there are three atheists; the best of them go to hell; for they are not warned by diseases, they fare sumptuously, and humble not their hearts before God.' It is not easy to say how much good a medical attendant of right dispositions may be the means of effecting, and this without any intrusion on the pastoral office-how much service he may render the minister as well as the patient, by informing him when, and where, and how he may be of use in some cases with which he might not otherwise have been acquainted.

The art of healing was first practised by men who had the care of souls, and I know not of any reason, human or divine, why they who profess that most noble of arts should neglect that highest of

cares.

My dear sister lived with me when she left school. How shall I speak of Maria ?-Oh, she was a treasure! I could not value aright a gentle, amiable, devoted sister. She is now a saint in heaven. When she was about twenty, we used often to converse on religious subjects; she was an interested inquirer-I a formal assenter. Possessed of a deep reverence for the word of God, she felt the obligation of complying with its precepts: but with regard to its promises and consolations it was a sealed book. She did not, as so many people in this day of profession, take the latter and disregard the former. Her's was a

surer though a more painful path. Deeply humbled under a sense of sin, she endeavoured by vigilant watchfulness, acts of piety, charity, and self-denial, to obtain peace of conscience, and reconciliation with her God. She looked at her sins instead of her Saviour. And the brother on whom she leant was no help to her here; he cried peace, peace, but her God withheld his peace. He would apply every remedy in hopes of meeting and alleviating her distress, but the Balm of Gilead was not of the number; he prescribed change of scene, and a variety of things, but the heavenly physician was not at hand to bless these vain efforts. The word of God which is quick and powerful, and sharper than a two-edged sword, had been permitted to pierce her, and the wounds were not to be thus slightly healed by one who would not have ascribed the honour where it was due.

Among other things I resolved that we would mix more in society than we had yet done; thinking my sister's depression of spirits and excessive sensibility might terminate in pulmonary complaint if her mind were not more amused, and though our tastes were much more for the seclusion of literary pursuits than the dissipation of the fashionables by whom we were surrounded, I persisted in it that it was necessary, in short it must be, and the next season found us as busily toiling in the race of pleasure as most of our acquaintance; but with this exception, the pleasure was indeed a toil to us.

There was among our gay friends one lady, a widow, who had been an object of pity to us for years. Possessed of an immense fortune, in which she had a life interest, and entailed in the male line, she had lost a family of five children, and there remained to her only three; two daughters who married, and the youngest, an

were

was

idiot boy. Lady Mwholly given up to pleasure, it was the sole aim, end, and bent of her existence. She lived in a constant whirl of gaiety and dissipation, and seemed as utterly incapable of giving place to a serious idea as of passing a solitary hour. She had adopted an orphan niece who in every respect was to her as a daughter.

Helen Cunninghame was a slender graceful girl, with a peculiarly retiring air and pensive expression of countenance. No one could have taken her for any thing but what she was, the poor relation whom a rich aunt had adopted as a matter of convenience rather than real benevolence. Lady M. expected that Helen should accompany her to every party and place of amusement. She was

obeyed, from a sense of duty not inclination; for it was evident her heart was not in the dance nor the dejeuner, the concert nor the soirée. Oh no, she was occupied by thoughts and feelings far beyond, and superior to the frivolities by which she was surrounded. She lived above them, and here in this barren wilderness where (if any where) the spiritually-minded might have exclaimed," Can these dry bones live”—even here was one precious plant of the Lord's own planting, whose trial it was that her lot in life was cast among those who in their lifetime revelled in their good things, unmindful of the world beyond the grave-the thoughtless company of the dead in pleasure. Before the close of that season I was informed by Lady M. that her protegée was in delicate health, and that she was sure it arose from her own folly in wasting so much time in study, and rising at what she considered a most unreasonably early hour. I had been quite prepared for this, since my sister had often told me how ill her dear friend was made by the constant excitement and

dissipation of her present situation. But instead of adopting the aunt's suggestion and forbidding early hours, I prohibited late ones, especially evening parties and crowded assemblies. And it seemed as though every desire of her heart was granted when I had told the person of whom she was afraid that rest and retirement were absolutely necessary.

I had often been told by some poor patients in a wretched and miserable quarter of the city that they owed a great deal to the kindness of a lady who visited them frequently for the purpose of reading and comforting them in their distress.

It was then so strange a thing for ladies to lay themselves out for the welfare of the lower orders, especially such distressed and miserable objects as many to whom my profession introduced me, that curiosity was aroused and considerably increased by the circumstance that I could obtain no information with reference to the unknown, excepting that she was attended by an elderly female servant. And we had been intimately acquainted for more than three years ere we discovered the lowly flower from whence such gentle odours proceeded; and it was then quite by accident that we were enabled to identify Helen C. with the good young lady to whom many of the living were so deeply indebted, and on whose

head the dying had invoked their latest blessings. You may be inclined to think this young Christian was more reserved and timid than is consistent with the precept which enjoins us to "let our light shine before men," but you, my dear friend, can hardly imagine the difficult situation in which she was placed; for you have not witnessed the great change in the opinions and customs of society which I have. Had Miss C. openly declared her feelings with reference

to visiting the poor, she would have been stopped in her exertions, crippled in her endeavours, and have only exposed herself to the charge of singularity and contempt of the rules and opinions of society. The profession of religion was by no means a popular, a fashionable thing, fifty years ago; there was then far more of reproach in the name of Christian than you who have been brought up in the tents of the righteous can have any idea of; but I do not hesitate to affirm that there was more zeal, more sincerity, more real devotion and consistency among the few followers of the Saviour in those days than there is in many of the present day, who with their mouth make great professions, but who are possessed of a bustling, pressing, talkative spirit, which is neither wholesome nor profitable.

I

I am an old man, and have doubtless many old fashioned notions, but if "days should speak and multitudes of years should teach wisdom," why not one whose master has spared him to the extreme limit of fourscore? and I must own I look with the greatest distrust upon many of those meetings and occupations for the female portion of the community which it is the custom to laud and extol, and from which many are disposed to infer that there is a vast increase of godliness and true religion. dread the spirit of display which is engendered and nourished by working parties, Dorcas committees, classes for discussing Scripture difficulties, meetings for relating what has been heard, said, and done by the fair visitor in their districts. Then are you an advocate for Christians sitting idle and neglecting opportunities of usefulness?-by no means. Whilst we have time we are to do good unto all men; time and influence are talents which we must occupy until he comes. I would have our women, especially young women,